


Burned Out

by a_hand_outstretched



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Choking, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, F/M, Hate Sex, Mild Blood, Minor Violence, Sibling Incest, big "dad doesn't want you and neither do I" energy here, post-season 2 finale, the kids are really not alright
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:00:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26436817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_hand_outstretched/pseuds/a_hand_outstretched
Summary: Siobhan pays Kendall a visit after the press conference.
Relationships: Kendall Roy/Siobhan "Shiv" Roy
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Burned Out

**Author's Note:**

> Heed the tags, this one's dark.

“Do we let her in?” Kendall asks, exhausted and panicky, holding his phone away from his face as he paces around the living room. Jess, whose head has been bobbing off and on for at least the last hour, yawns and shrugs and looks back to her laptop. “Fuck,” he sighs as he turns back to the phone, “Fine, yeah, send her up.” 

It’s late, and it’s been days since the press conference, but they’re still fielding incessant calls for comment and clarification. Kendall’s got a team of lawyers and analysts taking care of the real shit, but he’s the star of the show, he’s the one everyone wants a quote from. He scrubs a hand over his face. Shiv showing up here is very nearly the last thing he wants to deal with, but he can’t ignore it. He has dozens of unread texts and voicemails from her, and Roman, and even a few from Connor, but they’re all from the first night. Someone must have given the order to cease communication shortly after, and if Shiv’s breaking that now — well, he isn’t getting his hopes up that she’s trying to jump ship. But it’s a possibility. 

“You know, you should probably head —” he starts saying to Jess before he hears footsteps coming down the hall. Heavier than her usual gait, just a hair's breadth away from stomping. 

“Kendall!” Shiv barks out his name before she even comes into view. She glares at him when she enters the room, throwing her purse at a side table and missing. So, this visit probably isn’t to offer him intel from Logan’s strategy sessions. 

“Hey, Shiv,” he tries to keep his voice casual, but it comes out a little strained. He wonders if she was assigned psychological warfare duty for tonight or if she volunteered, and if that makes any difference to him. “How are things on the other side?” 

He shoots a glance at Jess, who’s already gathering her things. She’s witnessed enough Roy family feuds to know when to make a quick exit. She’s on her way out of the room by the time Shiv reaches Kendall, not spared another glance from either of them. They’re literally toe-to-toe, Shiv doing her best to get in his face. She grabs a fistful of his shirt before she starts in. 

“You selfish prick. How fucking dare you do that to us!” Shiv’s anger is usually more ice than fire, but not tonight. 

Kendall tries to back away. It’s not cowering, it’s a preemptive retreat. A decision not to engage. “I didn’t do anything to you. This is about what D—” Shiv cuts him off with a shake. 

“Fuck off, you know we’ll all go down with him. We’ve all done the dirty work.” She lets go of him and takes a step back, like the shock of his betrayal is hitting her all over again. “Was it worth it?” she asks, saying the words slowly, “Fucking your own family to feel better about yourself? Are you sleeping soundly with your squeaky clean conscience? You, of all fucking — I can’t fucking believe it.” She pauses again, at a loss for words, but the reprieve doesn’t last more than a few seconds. She shoves him. 

“Hey! Shiv, stop.” She shoves him again and he tries to grab her hands, so she starts hitting him, scratching at his face. Shiv and Roman have always fought like this, were practically born at each other’s throats. Kendall was always the mediator — maybe because he was older, maybe because of that killer instinct he lacked — and probably the only reason they didn’t murder each other in childhood. So this is something new, having all of Shiv’s fury directed at him physically. “What the fuck, have you lost your fucking mind? Stop it, stop!” 

He gets a grip on one of her arms and wrenches it to his chest, but she throws her weight into him at the same time and knocks them both to the ground. She’s fucking fast — she has both her hands on his throat before they’re horizontal. She isn’t holding back, between her hands squeezing and her weight on his chest, he can’t breathe. His initial reaction is acceptance, his body goes slack — let her do it, he thinks, he deserves worse. But soon his vision starts getting spotty and instincts kick in and it’s not hard to overpower her. He flips them over and slams her against the floor, so hard her head makes a loud smack against the hardwood. 

He gasps for air. He wraps his hands around her wrists and presses his knee into her stomach. His voice comes out softer than he wants, each word fighting its way out of his throat. “What do you fucking want from me, Siobhan? Grow up and fucking talk to me. You want me to kill myself? Huh? Go to prison so you all can keep on living your fantasy life in Dad’s pocket? You want in? You want to help burn it all to the ground? What is it? I’ll do it. Tell me. Tell me.” 

Their faces are just inches apart. She keeps her mouth shut in a firm line. He’s so tense his arms are shaking. He tightens his grip on her wrists, hard enough to bruise, and he’s very aware of how small and soft she is under his body, that he could just keep squeezing her until she pops, flattened beneath him. How long would she have kept her hands around his throat, if he had let her? He takes a slow, ragged breath. 

“You don’t even know what you want,” he says. “None of us know. That’s our fucking problem.” 

Shiv surges forward and bites his lip. 

“Motherfucker!” His voice breaks on the third syllable. She kisses him before he can pull away, sucks on the cut her teeth made in his lower lip, and it hurts like hell. This is just another way to fight, the logical next step, and he should have seen it coming, he shouldn't have touched her, he shouldn’t have let her in the fucking building. “Shiv, stop — please, stop,” he pleads, but he kisses her back at the same time. 

“Maybe this is what I want.” She tilts her hips up to rock against his leg. 

Kendall laughs, bitterly. She really must be out of ideas. Didn’t he prove his commitment to mutual destruction on live TV a few days ago? 

“Uh huh, is that all?” he asks, “You just want to get fucked? And then you’ll quit all this hysterical shit and run back to Daddy like the good little bitch you are?” 

“Maybe.” Shiv sneers at him, as if they’re anything but equals in this. “Are you too good for that?”

Kendall pushes her wrists together so he can hold them down with one hand. She lets him do it. He fumbles with the clasp on her pants and tugs them down. She looks at him like she’s bored, like she couldn’t care less either way, but he can feel how wet she is as his fingers slip between her legs. He wishes she wasn’t so he could call her bluff. 

“You’re disgusting, you know that? You’re a fucking sociopath.” 

“Says the guy with his hand down his sister’s pants.”

Kendall flicks her clit and her back arches. He can taste blood, coppery under his tongue. He kisses the corner of her mouth and leaves a red smear on her pale skin and he hates her, in that moment, more than anything, more than everything else combined. Years of pointless competition, betrayals, serving each other up for their father to gut like fish, for nothing. For this. 

“We’re both fucked, Shiv. I wish you could see that.”

Shiv spits insults at him — “You’re the one who’s a failure. You’re just a useless fucking cunt, trying to bring us all down with you. We’ll bury you, Kendall. You’ll wish you were fucking dead when Dad’s through with you.” — all variations on the same theme, and he wants to tell her not to bother. He squeezes his eyes shut and it’s just noise. His own pants are easy to push down, sweatpants loose at his waist, and he’s already hard. 

She’s still talking. Under his breath he says, “Shut the fuck up. Just fucking — stop, Shiv. Stop.” 

“Fucking do it then, you pathetic piece of shit.” 

He does it. He fucks her into the floor, ignoring how the position hurts his knees. He imagines the bruises she’ll have on her wrists tomorrow. He’s sure he’ll have a matching ring around his throat. 

Shiv’s making these soft grunts with each thrust. They sound like scoffs. Maybe they are. He knots his fingers in her hair and yanks her head to the side. The little cuts she left on his face sting, and blood is dripping from his lip, staining her blouse. He kisses her throat. She scoffs for real that time, pushes her body up against his. She starts trying to wriggle her hands out of his grip. 

“You’re fucking hurting me, Ken.” 

What the fuck else would he be doing? He lets go of her hair and covers her mouth. He can feel her clench around him — of course she fucking likes that — and it sends twin waves of arousal and nausea through him. 

He just wants to finish. He closes his eyes again. His mind flits briefly to Naomi, whose texts he’s been ignoring for days, and then to the porn he watched last night at 3am when he was too anxious to sleep. He lets go of Shiv and pulls out and comes with a few quick strokes over her stomach. He rolls over onto his back, pulls his sweatpants back up, and waits for the self-loathing to settle in. But nothing comes, no shame, no anger, no sadness. It’s all burned out. Maybe they can be nothing to each other now, he thinks. Maybe that’s what she wanted, really. 

Shiv sits up. “You’re not any better than the rest of us,” she says. Her voice is smug, but there’s a hairline crack in her features. That’s not news, Kendall thinks. A better person would have admitted that in the first place, instead of fucking their sister to prove the point. 

He stays quiet for a while. She stands, doing her best to straighten clothes stained with blood and semen. He could offer her a sweatshirt or something, but he won’t. He wonders if there are still a few reporters waiting outside the building, cameras at the ready. He wonders if she’ll threaten to blackmail him, or if that’s too obvious for her tastes. 

He stretches out his arm and wraps his fingers around her ankle. Looks up at her from the floor. “Fuck you, Siobhan,” he says, slow and sincere. 

“Don’t touch me, asshole.” She shakes him off and kicks him in the ribs — not hard enough to do real damage, but enough to make him curl up instinctively. He’s still lying there in the fetal position as she finishes putting herself together and collects the lipstick and pen that rolled out of her purse. He listens to her heels click lightly across the room and down the hall and he doesn’t think about anything at all.


End file.
